Wes Cutshall

As the owner for NamingForce.com (a website that allows entrepreneurs to get business name ideas) I often read descriptions of startup website concepts. From time to time, as Naming Force was getting started, I would receive an email suggesting that Naming Force should allow for more space to enter a product/website description. It was my response that if they couldn’t explain their service in 150 characters their was a problem with how they were explaining their product/service to the public. Although I eventually broke down and increased the text box length for website descriptions, I still believe that if you cannot explain your concept in under 150 characters, you have a problem. It’s important to be able to explain, usually in one sentence – or just a few words, what your website does.

I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with numerous members of the press about Fido Finder. I’ve found it important to be able to quickly explain the concept of the website at the very beginning of an interview in order for the media to understand the concept and subsequently ask the right questions. Although in it’s complete definition, Fido Finder is “a website that allows people to search and register lost and found dogs and receive email updates about newly added dogs that match” this isn’t an easily understandable explanation, and from a marketing standpoint it’s not very “sticky.”  What works much better is “a lost and found dog classifieds system.” Now, Fido Finder does much more than offer a static classifieds system, but that’s where the rest of the conversation fills in the blanks. In it’s simplest form the website is a newer version of a lost/found dog classified ad. Everyone understands this concept, and it’s a “sticky” explanation that can be understood and explained friend-to-friend, very easily.

If you’re working on a startup, or have already released your website, make sure that you have a short, canned, explanation of what your website does. Be sure to use this same explanation any time you first introduce the concept to people. Continually tweak the definition as time goes by, as industry terms and the public’s understand of them often changes through the course of a startup’s life. Although “cloud”, “crowd”, “social”, and “smart” are terms that potential customers know now, they didn’t start that way.